01 January 2017

Curtis Brown Creative’s review of the year

Team CBC (from left: Jack Hadley, Anna Davis, Rufus Purdy) at the 1980s-themed Curtis Brown Christmas party in December 2016

by Rufus Purdy
Events

Another year over; a new one just begun – John and Yoko could just as easily have been singing about creative writing courses as eliminating global conflict. And though we at Curtis Brown Creative had a wonderful 2016, we’re looking forward every bit as much to the new year.

Even away from publications and awards, we at Curtis Brown Creative had a particularly busy 2016. In February, we held our third Discovery Day event at Foyles Bookshop on London’s Charing Cross Road – giving hundreds of aspiring authors the opportunity to sit down and pitch their novels to literary agents from Curtis Brown and C&W. And we launched our first-ever anthology of students’ writing – The Book of Unwritten Rules – at Waterstones Piccadilly in April, which featured short stories by our Autumn 2011 3-month novel-writing group’s four published authors as well as nine rising literary stars. We also had visits from, among others, Renee Knight, David Mitchell, Adele Parks and SJ Watson – all of whom came in to speak to students on our novel-writing courses in London.

The big news, though, was the launch of our very first Starting to Write Your Novel course in May. This £200 online course for all-comers – as opposed to our longer courses, in which we select the 15 most talented writers from a pool of applicants – attracted unprecedented numbers of students, many of whom took to the blogosphere to talk about it afterwards. Such was Starting to Write Your Novel’s success that CBC director Anna Davis is now developing the notes, videos, tasks and resources for two more budget courses that we’ll be launching in 2017.

For a dedicated online course for those writing for young adults or children as part of a group of 15 (in which students are selected on the basis of their submission), with a top children’s author, apply for: